Gift of the Ice Storm

Winter Storm Landon's been an absolute brute. Here in southeast Ohio, it's dumped many inches of cold rain which, thank goodness, was rain and not snow. Thoroughly sick of moving through, dealing with, shoveling, and stumbling around in snow! The rain washed away almost all of the 16" of snow that had fallen over the last few weeks.  Thing is, it was still raining hard as February 3 turned to night, and the birds went to bed damp. Huddling in their roost cavities or in the cover of tree branches, those wet feathers froze to the substrate around them. 

So on wakeup, this white-breasted nuthatch was doubtless frozen to the inside of his cavity. His wet upper tail coverts and at least one wing feather were stuck. As he struggled to get free, they were pulled out. But the ice kept them glued to his tail all day long. 

What you see, then, is this weird plume-tailed variant of a white- breasted nuthatch. The odd shape of the feathers owes to the fact that upper tail coverts are quite long, running down the back and over the top of the tail. The black one is a wing feather, though. So he was pretty good and stuck--wing feathers are a lot harder to pull out than coverts or tail feathers-- but he got out.

Here's an unfortunate mourning dove who is wearing her tail on her wing. Rats. 

Long pointed tails are nice for maneuverability in flight (and dove flight is amongst the speediest around), but they're a liability in ice storms. 

Last but not least, my dear Bob the hand-raised song sparrow is back to looking like a ping-pong ball. Dang it!! 

Yes, he's still here with me, and I'm so glad of that. Released in September at 27 days of age, he's hanging in there, almost five months later!  I know he'll be well-fed through whatever the winter of 2022 throws at us. But dang. Ice storms--I hate them, and not because I usually lose power. I hate them because they're so tough on the wildlife I love. 

Losing a tail isn't quite as bad as it looks. A brush-loving species like a song sparrow can adapt. Even a mourning dove can fly just fine without a tail. It's harder, for sure, but they survive. And they should have a decent new tail within three weeks. Since the feathers were pulled out, the empty follicles are already gathering themselves to make more. 

I corresponded today with a kind woman from Athens Ohio who has five turkey vultures hanging around her backyard. Like us farther east, they are encased in ice after a rainy night that turned frigid. I explained that grounded turkey vultures are a thing in ice storms; that they cannot fly if their feathers are icy, and there are no thermals to give them lift. She and her husband thawed some chicken and offered it to the birds. Interesting twist: they have a 5' chain link fence around their yard, and the vultures are on the ground, inside the fence. Coincidence? I think not. If a white-tailed deer knows enough to jump into a fenced backyard to give birth (and they do!), I submit that a turkey vulture knows enough to know it's safer in a fenced yard than outside it. Something to think about, something to ponder. 

As I shot photos of my suffering songbirds, it occurred to me that there might be some cavity-roosters in my bluebird boxes in trouble. Could some have gone in to roost last night, wet, and not come back out? A little voice was tugging my sleeve. Go check. Go check. See if anyone is in need.

So I packed a nylon drawstring bag (for weak cold birds) and a screwdriver (to open the boxes), called Curtis Loew, and set out to the meadow to check some boxes. I heard a coyote bark several times nearby and stopped in my tracks. Curtis stopped, too, and let out one short, sharp bark. 

Hey. I know you're here. This is me, Curtis. 

I saw him before Curtis did. He was sitting out beyond the big pine, watching us. Wow. That is interesting. Coyotes are usually just shadows disappearing. Not this one.

I called Curtis to me, and he was only too happy to run back with me to the house. A romantic might think the coyote just wanted to play in the snow, but I wasn't about to offer my best boy for an experiment, or my heart for more breaking. I left my grateful and sensible Curtis inside and grabbed my big Canon rig. When I came out the back door, the coyote was still sitting out there, and that's how I got that first photo, from my deck. 

Do you see that sumac clump in the left foreground? That's how I got the rest of the photos. I snuck along the back of the house, ducked behind the low spruce by my fishpond, lined myself up with that clump of sumac, and walked in a straight, unwavering line toward the animal, staying always behind the thickest part of the shrub. 

I trusted he was still there, but I never took the chance of exposing myself. I just kept walking. I wasn't going to blow my cover just to see if he was waiting there.

 Finally I got to the sumac clump and peeked through the branches to catch sight of the animal, who had moved off to the side.

And look where he's sitting. That's the iron fence around Bill's grave, and the big Virginia pine that stands by it. Ice has brought its boughs to the ground. 

Though I stayed mostly behind the sumac clump, I'm sure the coyote knew I was there.

After all, he'd been watching me. 

I knew it was a male when I enlarged this photo. Click on it and you'll see, too.

The size of his tracks alone suggested a male.

It was a big coyote. The front pawprint shown here was 2 7/8" from heel to toe.

The hind paw (below)  is narrower, and has a smaller heel than the front paw.

Here is the imprint where he had been sitting when I first spotted him. 

And here he is loping along. There's a 16" span between the pawprints. 

After watching me for awhile, he stood up and turned to leave. What a long neck he has! 

He stood for a moment, looking. It was moving to make contact with a wild creature, here in this place I come visit every day. The way he looked back at me sent a feeling through me, something benign and wondering, not threatening. 

I guess this is the best shot. He was so red against the ice and snow, so warm. I wondered what he was thinking. I wondered why he and his pack have spared Curtis these past three years. If they'd wanted him dead, they've had a million chances to do it.

For now, and I hope for as long as Curtis lives, there is peace, and this beautiful red wild one, walking easily through the snow. 

All this, within sight of the house, with the ice still dripping off the sumac from last night. 

Ice storms are hard, but this one brought me a gift.

Here is where he melted back into the woods.

There were no birds trapped in my boxes--I checked.

There was just the little voice, telling me to go out and help,

the gift,

 and the silence when he had left.

 

A Tracking Snow

A new snow, a tracking snow. We walk out the driveway, Chet and I, looking at the signs left by all who passed in the night. 

Ah, bah, a housecat. I don't realize how much cats hunt our place until it snows. We have temporal separation. They're doing their work at night; I'm out in the daytime. Clever cats. Cat tracks have a very round look to them, and are clawless, and are arranged in a neat, straight line.

The next set I find I much prefer. A mink came loping along here last night!

Lovely little fine-toed tracks, more or less paired. Why the bright orange smartgloves? So I can find them, first, and so I can take photos while wearing them. I've already lost one of them. I rain gloves.

The mink tracks appear in bunches of four with a space in between the bunches, as the animal bound/shuffles along. It's a lopey gait, hump-backed, somewhere in between a shuffle and a leap.

I've seen only one mink in our 22 years here, and it was a brownblack beauty, bearing down on a very wet, bedraggled, shocky cottontail. I was guessing they'd tangled and the mink was about to finish it off in the dewy grass. We heard the scream that confirmed that hunch. You go ahead and help yourself to our rabbits. They'll make more.

Compare and contrast mink, above, with the gray squirrel tracks below. Squirrels have a rabbit-like forefoot plant behind the hindfoot. Think of a bunny hopping, with its big hind feet in front of its forefeet.

More squirrel tracks:

and just a bit farther down the driveway, the clumsy stars of Virginia opossum:

You can see the telltale tail drag marks in both these shots, above and below.

An eastern cottontail. Most people know these tracks. The feet are so heavily furred that you're hard-pressed to make out the toesies. Hind feet to the right, forefeet to the left. The rabbit is traveling left to right. 

This is all one night in our driveway. Obviously, a crittercam planted there would be lots of fun!

I have to run a mile and a half to find a coyote, though it could have just as easily been in our driveway, too. This one's walking up the drive to Waxler Church. All my kind of people go there.

See how large the intervals between the paired tracks is? Bigger animal, longer stride. 

How do I know it's a coyote and not a domestic dog? Well, the feet are elongate and very neat.

But I know also because the domestic dog walks sloppy.  While the coyote places his hind foot in the track of his forefoot, the happy dog drags his toes and ambles and shambles. His is not a neat straight line. His is staggered.

He's careless and joyful. He's Chet Baker. Dum de dum de dum.

We get to the Waxler Church, and a housecat has been sitting on the stoop, waiting for something or someone. Beautiful little tracks, and a place where it sat for awhile, shifting its feet in the cold. 

And on the way home, Chet Baker provides another Magnetic North Poo Sample. This, the third, and the only time he's been off a north-south axis. He's pointed 10 degrees N NW. Not bad. Not much of a deviation, if you ask me. Nobody knows why dogs tend to line up on a north-south axis when they poop. But it's been making the news nationwide as well as in Whipple. Please do not tell Chet Baker I published this photo. He'd be mortified.